What's in a Word?
by WRTRD
Summary: Beckett and Castle play a surprising new game, early in S5. Three-shot. Rating will go up to M in the second chapter. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** Just a bit of summer weekend fun to take us away from everything that's going on in the real world. The rating will most definitely go up to an M in the next chapter.

They've been back on the job for only a couple of weeks, and so far have managed to hide their relationship from their colleagues–primarily because she routinely threatens him about keeping his hands to himself and not looking at her while they're at work.

"What do mean I can't look at you?" he'd asked in bed the morning after she'd first issued the warning. "Won't everyone think that's"–he'd stopped to nibble her earlobe–"strange?" He'd licked the sweat from between her breasts. "Odd?" And then he'd stroked her hip seductively, and made her twitch. "Peculiar? Because seriously Beckett, I've been looking at you for years."

"Castle," she'd said, rolling quickly out of bed and standing up before things escalated and they were late to work. "You can look at me, just not like _that_."

"Like what?"

"Like you're about to ravish me."

"It's not my fault that you look so ravishing."

"Come on, promise me."

He'd looked her up and down, slowly and erotically. "I guess it'll be easier for me to do when you're not naked."

Since then he really had been trying, and mostly succeeding. But today? Today is the third day in the row with no new case, and he's been driving her insane since five minutes after he showed up at the precinct with coffee, which was only half an hour after she'd gotten there. He claims that he can't stand being at home without her. All day long he has been teasing her with innuendo, mostly when the boys can't hear. He sends her text after text, the most recent being, "Here are five places in the city where I want to have sex with you." He'd sent five photos with it: the main reading room of the New York Public Library; the dugout at Yankee Stadium; a Broadway theater; a water taxi, and the mattress department at Macy's.

It's a little after 2:00 when she goes to the break room to make an espresso, and while she's standing at the machine he crowds behind her. "The bullpen's empty," he whispers in her ear. "So I'm just going to take the opportunity and"–before she can say a word his hand is under her blouse and over her breast–"feel a cop." He withdraws his hand and takes a step back.

"Oh, you're so proud of yourself, aren't you?" she mutters, only half indignantly. "How long have you been saving up that little bit of word play?" She tugs on her blouse to straighten it and pushes him lightly out of her way.

"Foreverrrrrrrrr," he says, trailing her back to her desk.

"You know what, Castle?" she asks, sitting primly on her chair just as Esposito and Ryan return to theirs. "You're bored."

"Not really."

"I have a suggestion."

"Hey, guys," Castle calls out. "Beckett has a suggestion. I love it when she's suggestive."

For the sake of the other detectives, she gives him a withering look. "My suggestion is that he go home because he's obviously bored and he's driving me crazy. Unless you two would like to entertain him while I do some actual work," she adds, slapping her palm on a stack of files.

"Yo, Castle," Espo says. "You know what would be entertaining? If you went and got us some cannolis. A new Italian bakery opened a couple of blocks from here while you were off at the beach all summer."

Except when he wasn't off at the beach, she thinks. Except when we were getting each other off in his bed or mine for hours on end. She's afraid she just moaned. She glances at Castle, who has just arched one eyebrow. Oh, God, yes, she had moaned, no matter how softly. She really has to be more careful when she's here, has to censor her thoughts.

"How 'bout it, bro? You know, since we welcomed you back with open arms and everything."

You should see what I welcomed back with, she thinks this time, before she can rein in her subconscious.

"Okay," Castle says, shooting her a look as he gets out of his chair. "Just tell me where the place is and the treats are on me."

"You don't have to do that," Ryan says. "Javi's just being a smart ass."

"Yeah, well, he's right. I'll be back in a bit."

He must be texting her from the elevator, because her phone chirps less than 30 seconds after he leaves.

"You moaned, Beckett. Don't deny it."

"Fine," she types. "Here's the deal. Go home after you make your pastry delivery and I promise to play an incredible board game with you tonight."

"What board game?"

"Not going to tell you."

"I know every board game on the planet. Just tell me so I can start planning."

"You don't know this one."

"Don't be too sure."

"Oh, I'm sure."

"Is that a challenge?"

"Damn right. Bye."

He must have run to the bakery and back, because he's gone less than ten minutes and is almost breathless when he returns, bearing a white cardboard box tied up with green-and-white string.

"Gentlemen," he says, dropping the pastries at the edge of Espo's desk and bowing. "Thank you for welcoming me back." He makes a half turn and says, "You, too, Beckett. Would you care to join me in a creamy confection?"

She'll kill him. Just not here. Not kill, but punish. Definitely punish. "No, thanks." She flips open a folder and prays that he leaves very, very soon. She's trying to ignore them, but hears the faint buzz of voices, and after a short while a not-so-faint baritone only inches away.

"Night, guys."

"Night," Espo says.

"Thanks again," Ryan adds.

"I'm just going to text my daughter and be on my way."

"Night, Castle," she says, watching his fingers race across his phone and wishing she could change places with it. His fingers are miracles of nature.

"Night, Beckett."

Texting Alexis? Total bull. He was texting her. She gets the alert before he's even completely out of sight.

"Can I have a hint about the game?"

"No."

"Please?"

"Okay. The name is 3 words long. That's all you get."

It's some time before she hears from him again. "Hare and Hounds? Shadows in Kyoto?"

"Not even close."

"There aren't many games with 3 words that are for 2 people."

"Told you you didn't know it. See you at 5."

She's as anxious to see him as he is to see her, and she unlocks his front door at 4:49.

"Oh, thank God, you're early," he says, grabbing her around the waist and kissing her for as long as he can.

"Strip, Castle," she says, after she's recovered.

"Strip? Is this strip poker? Not a board game. Just saying. But what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you going to strip, too?"

"Of course I am. Hurry up."

"I love it when you're bossy. Where are we playing this alleged board game?"

"Dining room table," she says, unbuttoning her blouse.

"Naked?"

"Won't be the first time we've been naked there."

"True. Do I get to strip you?" he asks hopefully.

"No. Take your own clothes off, and I'll take off mine. Otherwise no game."

"You drive a hard bargain, Beckett."

"Hard? I should hope so." She unhooks her bra, dangles it over her wrist, arches her back, and retreats to the bedroom.

As soon as she's undressed she goes into the bathroom and brushes her hair out so that it's wild. She removes her makeup and gives her eyes a new cat-like look with dark liner and smoky shadow. Her lips are now dark pink, and she dabs perfume behind her ears, on her wrists, and between her breasts. She looks appraisingly in the mirror. "This should do it," she tells her reflection.

He's not staring at her, he's ogling. He's also almost drooling as he watches her stride towards him. "Jesus, Beckett, what are you wearing?"

"Wearing?" She feigns astonishment, because she knows exactly what he's saying, and why. "Is something wrong with your eyes? I'm not wearing a thing."

"The perfume. Your perfume. What is that?"

"It's called I'm Coming. Cost me a week's salary, so you'd better like it."

"Like it? I'm gonna buy stock in it. How can I not have heard of it?"

"Let's just say it's a specialty item," she purrs. "Not found in anything but a very…special shop. Now sit down at the table while I get the board."

"The board's here?"

"Yes, it is." She bends over to open a cabinet door, retrieves a battered maroon box, and carries it to the table.

"I thought you said this was a game I don't know. Sure looks like Scrabble to me. Which by the way is also only one word."

"This isn't ordinary Scrabble, Castle," she says as if explaining something to an inattentive child. "This is Dirty Word Scrabble. Every word has to be filthy or be a part of the body that can be involved with sex. If you play a word that's neither, your opponent gets the points."

"Oh," he says, eyes widening. "Oh. Have I told you lately how much I love your mind?"

"Not lately enough." She opens the board and places it between them, puts out two tile racks, and hands him the bag. "You draw first."

He makes a show of rattling the bag before finally pulling out one tile. "This is a good omen. I got R. For Rick."

"We'll see about that." She quickly removes a tile. "Ah, D. For Detective. I go first."

She takes seven tiles, arranges them on the rack, and briefly studies them. Smiling happily, she puts five on the board. "QUEUE. That's forty-eight points." She records her score neatly on the small pad next to her. "Your turn."

"First of all," he says peevishly, "I can't believe that you drew the Q already. And second, I get those twenty-eight points because queue is not a dirty word."

"Of course it is."

"Says who?" He tries to pull the score pad over to his side of the table.

"Says I," she answers, putting her hand over the pad. "And millions of other French-speaking adults."

"Whoa. You can't use French words. It's not fair."

"Why isn't it? I didn't say that the rules specified English only."

He's pouting. "But you speak three languages, Beckett. You'll beat the pants off me."

"Your pants are already off. But if you're interested in beating…" She licks her lips. "Besides, wouldn't you like to expand your naughty-word vocabulary, no matter what the language?"

His eyes, so dilated that the pupils have almost obliterated the irises, are glued to her. "You have a point," he says.

"So does queue."

"Queue has a point?"

"Tip, you might say. Or head."

"Oh. So queue is…?"

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** This chapter is rated M, seriously M. Please stop here if M is not in your FF alphabet.

" _Queue_ is French for cock," she says.

"I'm guessing not as in rooster?"

"No, as in a body part that you have and I don't. Those forty-eight points are mine."

"Can't believe you had a pair of U's, too."

"Just luck," she says brightly, stretching in her chair in a way that she knows will have a desired and desirable effect on him.

"You know," he says, oozing charm, "we could have a side game."

"A side game?" She's trying to resist him, because teasing him is too much fun to abandon this quickly. "What's the matter with this game?"

"Nothing, but couldn't we have a side game of synonyms? Five points for each synonym for the most recent word played. We take turns. Like I could say 'schlong' right now, and get five points.

"Prick."

"Tool."

"Pecker."

"Chub."

"Nope, Castle. Chub's no good."

"Please, you're arguing with me about male anatomy?"

"I am. Chub is a hard-on. And by the way hard-on wouldn't be allowed at all in Dirty Word Scrabble because it's hyphenated." She smiles innocently, or as innocently as she can when he's sitting this close to her, overwhelming her with pheromones. "So, to return to chub. Chub is not another word for penis, it's the condition of a penis under certain circumstances."

"Like mine."

"I hope so. At least by the end of the game."

"You won't have to wait that long, believe me."

She leans across the table, nipples dangerously close to knocking QUEUE off the board. "So that's ten points each for synonyms. And it's your turn, Castle."

He stares at his tiles, arranges them, rearranges them, looks at the board. "Aha! This is brilliant. Scrabble symmetry. I should get bonus points for doing this. Take a look at this, Beckett." He carefully–precisely, even, he's so precise with his hands–places DICKS on the board, simultaneously creating the plural QUEUES. "Thirty-two points, which pales next to your forty-eight, but I don't care. I have the satisfaction not only of making a synonym of your word, but attaching the two. Oh, and please note that my word is in our mother tongue."

She writes 32 under his name on the score pad. "Tongue would be a good word," she says, running her own along her bottom lip. "Wouldn't it? Definitely a body part that's involved during sex. But speaking of synonyms for dick? Willy."

"Pole."

"Unit."

"Johnson."

"Tonsil tickler. Though I grant you that's two words."

He gasps, eyes dancing. "Tonsil tickler? Beckett! Have I told you lately how much I also love your mouth?"

"Why, yes, you have. This very morning, in fact. When I was tickling my tonsils with your tonsil tickler." She scrunches up her nose. "Although I had my tonsils out years ago. Still, you were definitely tickling the spot where they used to be." She massages her throat as she looks him in the eye.

He rubs his hands roughly down his face. "I don't know how long I can stand this."

"You mean you're not enjoying this game?"

"Oh, I'm loving this game, I'm mad about this game. I just don't know if I'll be able to keep it up much longer."

She gets halfway out of her chair so that she can get a better look at him, then sits down. "Hmm. Looks like you're up to it now."

He groans. "It's your turn, Beckett."

"First I'll give us each another ten points for synonyms." She makes the notation and takes five new letters out of the bag so that she has seven again. "Ah," she says cheerfully. "You'll like this one. I'm making three words with one play."

"And they're all dirty? How is that possible?"

"No, only the first word, the four-letter one." She puts her letters on the board, beginning with the last two, which are next to the Q and the U of QUEUES. "See? With the I next to the Q I have QI, and then the T next to the U, which makes UT. And the C and L above them makes CLIT. Ta da! Twenty points."

"I think I should get the thirteen points for QI and UT," he says solemnly, "since those aren't dirty words or body parts. You should just get the seven for CLIT."

She glares. "All right. Yeah, well, in the synonym department, just be sure to give me five for nub. And another five for lovebud. And button. And pearl. That's twenty."

"What about hood ornament?"

"Two words, Castle. Doesn't count."

"Right."

"And it's your turn."

He's restocked his letters and looks them over for a long time. "Oh," he says at last. "Oh, this is fantastic." He punches the air. "I can't believe how good this is."

"Stop slapping yourself on the back and put the letters on the board. I want to see what this fantastic move is."

He grins. "Here you go." Using the C in CLIT to begin his word, he puts down H, O, a blank tile, H, and A. "The H is on a triple-letter and the word is doubled. That's forty-two points."

She squints at it. "Wait a minute. What's the blank stand for?"

"C."

"CHOCHA? What the hell is that?"

" _Chocha_? It's Spanish. You used a French word, so I can use a Spanish one. What's good for the goose–"

"OK, fair enough. But since when do you speak Spanish?"

"I don't, but I may have picked up a few words on a debauched weekend in Mexico."

"And when was said weekend?"

"When I was twenty."

"Mmhmm. That better be the truth. And what exactly is CHOCHA?"

"You could call Espo. I bet he knows."

"Or I could just ask you. Since you're here in the room. Naked."

He purses his lips and folds his arms across his chest–the chest whose every muscle, every inch of satiny skin, she has explored and plans to continue exploring. "In polite circles, or a doctor's office, one would say vagina."

"One would?"

"Yes."

Very slowly, she pushes her chair away from the table, and walks around until she's standing directly behind him. "Well, since I was raised to be very polite," she says sultrily, putting her arms around his neck and making sure that her wrists, redolent with I'm Coming perfume, are not too far from his nose. "I'd better say these very quietly, so only you can hear them."

She knows that warm breath against his ear is one of his favorite turn-ons, and she whispers to him one filthy synonym after another. Partway through her list she unclasps her hands and puts one on his shoulder, occasionally gripping it for emphasis. He's squirming. She loves it.

"Holy shit," he says when she finishes. "Where did you learn all those?"

"You're not the only one who had a debauched weekend in your youth."

"Really? You?"

"Just kidding, Castle. I heard most of those in when I was working in Vice."

He surprises her by reaching around behind him and pulling her head down until his cheek is brushing against hers. "I especially liked that last one."

"Snapper? I knew you would." With that she pulls her head away and returns to her chair. "Did you keep count?" she asks as she takes her seat. "Because I think I must have had at least twenty synonyms, don't you? So that's an extra hundred points for me."

"Worth it. So totally worth it." He smiles and rubs his ear, almost certainly without realizing it, and it makes her insides melt.

"I believe it's my turn," she says, straightening up, well aware of what that does to her breasts, and what they in turn do to Castle. She grimaces at her tiles. "Ugh. My letters are terrible. No. Okay. This isn't too bad." She places three letters in the upper right-hand corner of the board, the first two on top of the last two in CHOCHA. "I have three words again. AH, BA, and the body-part one, ABS. Twenty-four points. And yes, you can have the nine points for AH and BA, but I get fifteen for ABS. Believe me, my abs get a workout when we're–"

"I know," he says. "I know they do. I am beyond belief in love with your abs." He glances at his tiles. "My letters suck, too."

"Suck, such a great word. You think it's dirty enough for this game? Given the possibilities of the verb. It has such a deliciously filthy sound, doesn't it? Kind of onomatopoetic. Suckkkkk." She smiles at him, and waits.

He puts his hand over his heart and gives her a rapturous look. "I never thought I'd live to hear anyone say 'onomatopoeia,' in any form, in a situation like this."

"You've been in a situation like this?"

"You know what I mean. We can debate whether suck should be allowed in the game later, if I don't die first. Meanwhile, I do have a word." He adds two tiles to her BA. "There. BALL. Only six points, but it's nice to make a word that's both a noun and a verb, even in Dirty Word Scrabble."

"So which is that," she asks, pointing at BALL. "Noun or verb?"

"That's what I like about it. It's both."

"I get that, but do you have a preference?"

"Not really. Why?"

"Because since you don't, I'm going to choose. I'm going for the synonyms for the verb. Not that I don't love your balls."

"Glad to hear it."

"Like you didn't already know." She extends her leg under the table, and tickles his ankle with her bare foot. Then, inhaling deeply, she says. "Okay, verb. Fuck."

"Shag."

"Bang."

"Screw."

"Hump."

"Copulate."

"Really, Castle? Copulate?"

"Perfectly good word."

"It is. But it just sounds so, I don't know, clinical."

"You're right." He stops and looks seriously at her, holding her where she is with the intensity of his expression. "There's nothing clinical about us, is there, Kate?"

With that one question, the air changes. It's still electric, still fizzing and snapping, crackling and sparking, but suddenly it's quiet, too. It's hot but it's warm. The heat of sex and the warmth of–dare she say it?–love.

"No," she says softly. "Nothing clinical at all."

"You know what I'd like to do?"

She shakes her head.

"I'd like to take a break from this game, and come back to it later. Because I can't spend another minute looking at you, just out of reach, and not be able to touch you. I want to wrap myself around you and have you wrap yourself around me. I want to take us to bed."

"Me, too."

What follows is the tenderest, quietest, most profound sex that she's ever known. He brings her to the edge again and again and again, and his approach is different each time. It's as if he wants each time to be perfect its own way, or close to perfect, before he tries something else, and it is. If she were thinking clearly–which she isn't now, not while he is filling her up like this, emotionally and physically–she'd be going mad with frustration, but she's not. She has no idea how many times she's almost peaked before he pulls her back, pulls them back, but when she feels almost delirious, is about to tell him not to hold off any longer, he shifts them both, just a little. But a little is everything, and he drives into her over and over, until she comes on a scream and he on something like a roar–the first sounds that either of them has made since they left the table full of words. It's an orgasm such as she has never experienced, certainly the longest, and for the first time in her life she truly understands the French expression for it: _la petite mort_. The little death.

Except that she has also never felt so alive.

TBC

 **A/N** This story will be three chapters long, rather than two. I'm plotting all the moves (and calculating the scores) on my Scrabble board on the kitchen table and am relieved that no one suddenly decided to drop in. Thanks to Mobazan27 for sending me the word _chocha_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** This chapter is also rated M.

"Time to play ball, Beckett," he says, rolling over and getting out of bed.

"I think that's what we just did." She's pleased that he's standing close enough that she can reach out and lightly swat him on the knee. The same knee that only half an hour ago was, to her immeasurable delight, nudging her thighs apart. Reveling in that memory, she gets out of bed, too, and follows him into the dining room, where he immediately sits in his chair.

"Continuing the baseball metaphor," he says, grinning at her so wickedly that she's tempted to drag him right back to bed, "you're up."

Before commenting, she sits down and moves her tiles around. "Brace yourself," she says, quickly putting a G above the O in CHOCHA, and below it an N, followed by an A and a D. "That's GONAD, and a double-word score, so fourteen points for me." She holds up her hand. "And since gonad is irrefutably–"

"Irrefutably? Bringing out the big guns, Beckett."

She gives a look designed to unnerve him. "Trying to put me off my game, Castle? Won't work. As I was saying, since gonad is irrefutably a synonym for the noun version of the last word played, ball, I get five points. Nineteen altogether."

"Noun version of BALL, huh?"

"Yup."

"Okay, then. Nut."

"Stone."

"Nard."

" _Cojon_. If you can use Spanish, so can I."

"Wouldn't the singular be _cojone_?"

"It would not. But feel free to look it up."

"Never mind. I think what I'll feel free to do is play my turn." He hums a tune so softly that she can't hear it properly. "This goes nicely with your perfume. Which, by the way, is still driving me wild. Anyway, for this I don't even mind wasting a blank on a double-letter square." He puts the blank tile to the left of the second U in QUEUE, and an M to the right of it. "The M is on a double-letter square, too. That's only seven points, but I'm proud to say that it's not only a filthy word but something irrefutably related to sex. Released during."

"So I guess that blank represents not at least seven other letters that I could name, but a C?"

"Excellent deductive reasoning, Beckett. No wonder you're such an ace detective. Both the C's have already been played, so I used a blank. CUM it is."

She doesn't wait a second. "Rope."

"Load."

"Wad."

"Cream."

"Erectoplasm."

That makes him laugh. "Oh, good one. Erectoplasm."

"Thanks." A light suddenly goes on in her brain. "Aha! I just got it."

"Got what?"

"What you were humming a minute ago. It was 'Something's Coming,' wasn't it? From _West Side Story_. Good one, too, Castle." She picks up her pencil, gives him seven points for his word and ten points for synonyms, and with considerable satisfaction adds fifteen more synonym points to her own score. "My turn."

Putting an L to the right of the A in GONAD and working downwards, she quickly spells out LABIA. "Double word, sixteen points. You get seven for my AL and DA. Although it should be reward enough for you to see LABIA on the board, knowing how you feel about mine."

"I feel–"

"Shut up."

"Okay. Shutting up. But also playing a word now."

"That was fast."

"I know you like slow, Beckett, but I can also do fast. I also know that you hate this word, but I can't let that bother me in the war that is Dirty Word Scrabble. This word is allowable and it's also a synonym for your last one." He puts a T to the left of the last letter in LABIA, and below it W, A, and T. "TWAT. Double word, fourteen points, and you get two points for TA."

"It's a disgusting word, Castle."

"You're the one who made up this game. No grousing, please."

"Fine." Oh, she'd been hoping for this the minute she had drawn the J, and here's her opportunity now that she has an S. "I think you'll like this one, Castle. It intersects, appropriately, with DICKS." She puts her J above the I in DICKS, and an S and M underneath. "JISM. Now there's a word I really love. And it's worth twenty-six points."

"Jism is beyond worth, Beckett."

"Spoken like a true gentleman."

"Bet your bottom dollar. Or at least your bottom." He looks smugly at his letters. "Oh, you're not going to like this, either. It's a real guy word. Look." He starts putting down his letters, beginning with P to the left of the A in TWAT, and then a downward string of U, T, A, N, and G. "PUTANG! See it cozying up to TWAT like that? Perfect placement, wouldn't you say? Cute little synonyms."

"Cute?"

"Well, I'm being decorous. Anyway, it's seventeen points for me, and, hmm, twelve for you for PA and UT. That's a net gain for me of only five, but I don't mind." He smacks his lips. "Putang."

"Geez."

"Geez? That reminds me, the Z still hasn't shown up."

"Nope. And I got nothing but junk here."

"You have junk over there? I'm the one with junk. Guys have junk." He's cackling.

"I should throw one of my junk, as in low-scoring, letters at you, Castle." She stares at the board and begins to smile. "Ah, but thanks to the G you just played, I can get rid of five of them." She makes a horizontal line of them that attach to the G in PUTANG. "Triple word. Twenty-one points for EATING." When she looks up his eyes are boring into her, and just like that he makes jelly of her knees.

"Cunnilingus," he says, way too smoothly.

"Fellatio," she answers.

"Suck."

"Blow."

"Slurpy."

"Uh-oh, here he comes. She feels his foot moving up her calf and onto her inner thigh. He knows exactly how she reacts to that.

"I love slurpies, Beckett," he says, pitching his voice in a way that reduces her to whatever this is. A puddle, something. "I really, really love slurpies. And so do you. Too bad there's no Seven-Eleven nearby, or I'd go get you a slurpy. Or better yet, I could improvise right here, couldn't I? Give you the other kind of slurpy, the kind you're crazy about. The one with all-natural ingredients."

How he has such soft feet she doesn't know. No callouses, no rough skin, nothing. They're perfect. It's probably some zillion-dollar cream he uses. His arch is caressing her thigh and his toes are curling, so close to her–. "Gaahhh."

"Oh, yes, the slurpy you're craving is totally organic."

She can barely keep her eyes open, and he's still talking. His foot is still sliding around–.

"Not vegetarian, of course, especially with all that tongue in it."

Her eyes are about to roll back into their sockets, but her ears are functioning. She can hear him.

"Why, Beckett. You're so flushed. Are you feeling a little hot? You look awfully hot. But your nipples are puckered, as if they were cold."

She probably wouldn't have been capable of realizing that he's just stood up, except that his foot has disappeared from her thigh and she wants it back. Now he's coming around to her side of the table.

"It's not cold in here, is it? I don't feel cold at all. If I were cold, my testicles wouldn't be where they are."

Where are they? Oh, there they are, oh. And definitely not shrinking. Nothing about him is shrinking. Expanding, yes.

"How about I help you out, Beckett? Out of your chair, that is." Suddenly his arms are around her, and he's lifting her. "Mmmm, you look good enough to eat, here on the table. Do you mind if I sit in your chair? Because I think if I do, and you stay right there, it would be the perfect spot for a slurpy."

Her eyes are closed again, but every nerve in her body is on high alert. She feels him slide her back a little from the edge of the table, feels his hands on her thighs, and then his tongue. He's stopped talking, but there's a loop in her head playing "all that tongue in it." Oh, that tongue. But lips, too, and fingers. One finger, two fingers, more tongue, is that three fingers? She can't count. And he's holding her down and working her up and there's his tongue again doing the most miraculous things and she's trying to hang onto his head but she can't and holy mother of God, what was that?

"Wow, Kate!"

She has to get her breath, maybe get a coherent thought, too. In a minute. She finally opens her eye to see his focussed on hers. He's looking happily dazed.

"That was incredible."

"You're telling me, slurpy man."

"You squirted once before, you remember?"

"I may be half out of my mind at the moment, Castle," she says, sitting up and draping her legs over his shoulders. "But yes, I do remember. Our first night. First time for me."

"Yeah, well, take it from me. That wasn't even a hint of what was to come. So to speak."

"You're licking your lips."

"Told you I loved slurpies."

"Let's trade places."

"Really?"

"Really. Get on the table and I'll get down. My turn to go down."

"Told you I loved your mouth, too."

She slides her legs off him and stands up, not surprised that she's a little wobbly. "You'll love it even more in a minute, I promise." She's just about to take him in her mouth when she looks at him and says, "You know, we've been together for almost two months and we still act like sex-starved teenagers."

"Is that a complaint?"

"Hell, no."

"Good. And speak for yourself. I never did anything half this good when I was a teenager."

"Neither did I. You think we'll still be like this when we're ancient?"

"Definitely. As long as our parts are working."

"I have no doubt they will be. And on that subject, it's time for me to get to work on that part of yours."

"Work? You call that work?"

"Play," she says a few moments later, after giving him his first, long lick. "You're my one-man playground."

She can both feel and sense that he's desperately trying not to come, to hold off as long as he can. She wants him. Now. Not after recovery time, now. She lets go.

"Beckett? Kate?" He's not gasping, but close to it. "Why did you stop?"

She gets on the table and crawls on top of him. "Because I can't stand waiting to have you inside me, that's why. And you're ready–"

"Oh, I'm ready."

"And so am I," she says, sinking down on to him.

"You like this part?" he says, smiling up at her.

"Love this part. I love all your parts." She starts to ride him hard, and when she leans down to kiss him, he sweeps his arm up to draw her in.

There's an odd swoosh next to them, followed by a soft thud and a lot of clatter, the sound of wood falling on wood. They're chest to sweaty chest, and nose to nose, and they freeze. "Was that?" he asks, a trace of horror in his eyes.

"The game? Yeah. I think you knocked it onto the floor."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I mean, we weren't through, and I know how competitive you are."

"I'm competitive? _I'm_ competitive? What about you?"

"I am, too. I admit it. I don't know what the score was, but you were ahead."

She gives him her best smile, the one no one else has ever gotten or will ever get from her. "I was. But here's one of the best things I've learned in the last couple of months. You're an incredibly, incredibly strong finisher."

 **A/N** And that's a wrap. Or in their case, unwrap. Thank you all, including the guest reviewers whom I can thank only here (like Hawkie. Nice to see your name again!).


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